Former Colorado funeral home owner arrested after hoarding cremated remains, leaving corpse in hearse for 2 years

A former funeral home owner accused of hiding a woman’s corpse in the back of a hearse for two years and hoarding the cremated remains of at least 30 people was arrested Thursday.

The arrest of Miles Harford, 33, is the latest allegation of misconduct by Colorado funeral home owners, a string that includes the discovery of nearly 200 decomposing bodies at a funeral home. The horrifying finds have underscored the laxness of state funeral home regulations and pressed lawmakers to try to strengthen the laws.

A grisly scene of urns stashed around the Harford property, from the crawl space to the hearse where the woman’s body lay under blankets, was uncovered in early February during a court-ordered eviction at his home, police said.

Harford owned Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services in the Denver suburb of Littleton, police have said, and the hoarded cremains appear to be those of people who died from 2012 to 2021. The funeral home has been closed since September 2022.

A warrant lists potential charges of abuse of a corpse, forgery of the death certificate, and theft of the money paid for the woman’s cremation, though Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said previously that other charges are possible.

Police interviewed a seemingly cooperative Harford the day after the Feb. 6 discovery, the arrest affidavit shows. Denver Police Cmdr. Matt Clark previously said that Harford acknowledged to police that he owed money to several crematories in the area and that none would cremate the woman’s body, so he decided to store it in the hearse. The deceased woman’s family told investigators they were given what they believed were the woman’s ashes, which have been turned over to a medical examiner’s office.

Other Colorado funeral homes have allegedly sent fake ashes to grieving families.

When an arrest warrant was issued for Harford on Feb. 12, however, the suspect didn’t turn himself in. By Thursday, police still couldn’t find him and offered a $2,000 award for information leading to his arrest.

Authorities were able to “possibly establish” the identity of 18 individual cremains, according to the arrest affidavit. Police also discovered online reviews of the funeral home with a number of complaints. The families cited poor communication from the company in giving back the remains of their loved ones. One family said they received ashes in an urn labeled with the wrong name, the document shows.

>More than two dozen additional criminal cases and complaints involving Colorado funeral homes since 2007 were detailed in a January report to lawmakers from state regulators. The cases included mishandled bodies, mislabeled remains, ashes never being returned to families and improper embalming of bodies.

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